The IUCN/SSC Red List Assessment, Reintroduction Guidelines and the Iberian Lynx Applying the Red List criteria to define a recovery strategy for the Iberian lynx

the world’s leading authority to judge the conservation status of animal and plant species. Species are classified according to a sincere assessment of the status of the population(s) into categories of increasing threat of extinction. As the first cat species ever, the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) was up-listed into “Critically Endangered ” in 2002. The Red List assessment, analysing the status of a species, can also be considered when developing conservation strategies, as it classifies a species according to a complex list of biological criteria. These criteria allow illustrating different possible recovery scenarios and can therefore be used to develop a basic recovery strategy. 1. The „Red List “ history of the Iberian lynx The IUCN/SSC Red List aims for a continuous survey of the status of the world’s animal and plant species. The specialist groups with their members in the range countries assess the status of threatened species yearly, and classify them according to a hierarchical system of threat levels. The Iberian lynx has already in the first assessment in 1986 been classified Endangered (Table 1). However, already an earlier assessment by Scott (1965) – then still classified as subspecies pardina of the species Felis lynx – judged the Iberian lynx to be endangered. In the year 2002, after the newest monitoring effort